Quick trip to the boatyard

A week ago I took a quick trip up to Langkawi for a few days to see how things were coming along in the boatyard and do a little work of my own there.

The first thing I noticed was the beautiful new topsides paint, which is polished to perfection. It’s a tiny bit darker than the old paint.

I spent most of my weekend finishing up all the chartplotter wiring and mounting of the new pedestal guard. It’s now just awaiting a teak enclosure from the carpenter in which the chartplotter will be mounted.

I did some more debugging of the NDC-4 NMEA multiplexer which had stopped working enroute to Langkawi, and found it was just due to a loose power wire amid the tangle of wires in the nav electronics area, which I’ve been meaning to clean up but haven’t yet. So that’s fixed. I also ran a cable for an Icom HM-157 remote mic which will go in the cockpit; I’m going to pick up an M-422 DSC radio to replace my ancient non-DSC one.

While I was away the yard had gotten a bunch of other stuff done. They installed some coaming boxes for me in the cockpit coaming:

The rudder was (mostly) dropped out to clean up calcification on the rudder stock and replace the bearings, which were pretty worn. Unfortunately the rudder couldn’t quite come all the way out without another lift.

The old cutless bearing, where the prop exits the hull, was removed for replacement. The old bearing had a bronze housing so it was pretty hard to get out; the new one will have a fiberglass housing and nice vulcanized rubber.

In the cabin, the carpenter did a great job of cutting two new small hatches in the cabin sole for access to the tops of the two fuel tanks. Aside from the new varnish, you’d never know they weren’t always there:

I started working on running the wiring for the fuel tank senders — a tricky job that involved a long flexible pickup tool, some fishing line, and a lot of patience, since there is no easy access except to the tops of the tanks. Ran out of time (and wire) to fully finish the job, and I’ll still need some more time to calibrate the senders as well.

Up above, the yard had mostly finished sanding the deck in preparation for painting:

While they were at it they sanded the teak handrails; I asked them to go ahead and sand and varnish all the brightwork — which is really just the handrails and the gunnel cap rails. If all the rest of the boat’s exterior is going to look shiny and new, might as well do up the teak too.

They even sanded some of the chipped paint off the windlass; it’ll get a new coat or two:

While I was there the carpenter was getting started (and mostly finished) with finishing off the dodger, which was left rough after the old roof was cut off. We ended up deciding to keep the panel with the little “tank windows” — which will be cut much larger and replaced with nice big panes of polycarbonate, since I have lots of that sitting around. Above that, a small segment of roof will be extended back a couple of feet to protect the helm. The carpenter made some nice curved support for the roof, and put on a lip at my request to keep out water and give me something to grab. They also gave the whole thing a nice curve (the support in the center is temporary, obviously):

Here’s a view from the side from down below:

By now the whole thing should probably be glassed over. They still need to make a folding bimini frame; a cloth bimini will extend above the hard roof and provide nice cover for the whole cockpit. The canvas maker will be making some flaps so the whole cockpit can still be enclosed as before, which is probably going to be necessary in colder climates.

The real highlight of my short visit was the engine. It’s now all installed, aligned, and ready to go aside from one or two remaining small tasks. Pete cleaned everything up nicely and put the galley back together. Here’s the new engine:

The big remaining issue is installing a waterlock box in the exhaust outlet hose (which is the big black hose in the above photo). It’s surprising there wasn’t one there before. The space constraints are tight, and it doesn’t look like an off-the-shelf box is going to fit, so I asked Barry to make one from fiberglass, which he agreed was the best approach.

The shiny new dual Racor fuel filter setup is a lot simpler and cleaner than the old custom dual filter contraption. The only downside is there is now no electric fuel lift pump. I may install one eventually, but it’s not a big deal for now.

Here’s the new engine from the front:

Pete cleaned up the engine plumbing pretty nicely. There is still a bit of a mess related to the watermaker plumbing, but that will get cleaned up as I work on re-commissioning the watermaker. An old through-hull that was used for a no-longer-functioning speed log is being repurposed as watermaker and domestic saltwater intake.

Pete came by the yard for a little while to go over the install with me. Nothing too complicated to see as the engine is pretty straightforward. We stuck a garden hose in the raw water strainer and ran the engine. It started instantly, sounded really smooth, throttled up effortlessly, and stopped instantly thanks to the nice “stop” button on the new instrument panel. I wish I’d had my video camera handy. The throttle lever is on the engine is reverse that of the old engine, and flipping that around at the steering pedestal side is the only other real remaining engine related task.

Not sure when I’ll get back to Langkawi again — probably not until after Christmas — but in the meantime the yard’s got a lot to go on.

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We are Charlene and Kris, a Singaporean and American couple living in SE Asia. Oia is our boat. She's a 40' sloop outfitted for cruising; she has lain in Singapore for a couple years and is now nearly ready for some real sailing. This blog is about the trials, tribulations, and adventures of learning more about Oia, living on a boat, and sailing in Southeast Asia!